News from The Barnet Society

Preparations are well underway for the annual Barnet Christmas Fayre on Sunday 3 December – including elves rehearsing their dance routines for their production, Twas the Night Before Christmas, to be staged at the Bull Theatre.

End of an era.  Butcher’s Hook, the last remaining butcher’s shop in High Street, Barnet, has ceased trading and the premises are for sale or to let.

Barnet High Street’s historic Brake Shear House complex, which is boarded up ready for demolition, has gained a temporary reprieve, and former tenants of workshops and offices are being offered fresh short-term leases.

Cameras, smart phones and tablets will be out in force to capture images of the many much-admired and much-loved models that will be on display at the fourth annual Barnet Market classic car show on Saturday 10 June.

CHIPPING BARNET HIGH STREET – PROPOSED PEDESTRIAN IMPROVEMENTS: BARNET COUNCIL PUBLIC CONSULTATION, 28 MARCH – 20 APRIL 2017 Comments by the Barnet Society, April 2017 The Barnet Society supports the general intention of the latest Council proposals.

Members of Chipping Barnet Town Team have given their backing to Barnet Council’s plans to widen one side of the High Street pavement – from the Post Office to just beyond the entrance to the Spires shopping centre – despite criticism from some residents in nearby streets.

Graffiti daubed on walls and the sides of buildings in and around High Barnet has become an increasing eyesore in the opinion of residents who ask the Barnet Society why there has been no attempt in recent months to mount a clean-up.

Plans to improve one of the busiest stretches of Barnet High Street by planting trees, and providing benches and cycle hoops, have been upstaged by the arrival of a super-size black kiosk for a new smart telephone. It has been installed at precisely the point where pavement was due to be widened.

Pupils of the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School from the Old Bull, High Barnet, were guests of the Mayor of Barnet, Councillor David Longstaff, when he presented them with medals for winning sixth place in the awards for London’s New Year’s Day parade.

Mitchells and Butlers say they have created ten new jobs following the conversion of the Red Lion public house into a Stonehouse pizza and carvery. The Mayor of Barnet, Councillor David Longstaff, officially re-opened High Barnet’s landmark public house, at the top of Barnet Hill, after a four-week closure.

A plan to widen the pavement on one side of Barnet High Street, from the Post Office to just beyond the entrance to the Spires shopping centre, is about to go out for public consultation.

Brilliant sunshine and crystal blue skies put some added sparkle into the annual Barnet Christmas Fayre which filled the High Street with a wide variety of stalls and plenty of seasonal cheer.

The Barnet Society’s long-running campaign to try to secure a short period of free parking at the 63 parking meter spaces along the High Street featured prominently in Dom on the Spot, BBC television’s latest series about the people whose job it is to hand out on-the-spot fines.

Years of friendly rivalry over which shop in Barnet High Street has the longest record of continuous service seems to have been finally resolved. Documents unearthed by Peter Wanders suggest his shoe shop has been in business for longer than Victoria Bakery.

After mounting concern about the recent loss of leading retailers, High Barnet’s shopping centre has received a shot in the arm: H&M, the leading Swedish fashion chain, has finally signed up to take the lease of a brand new store in the Spires shopping centre.

An announcement that had been expected in early June about a go-ahead for the Spires shopping centre redevelopment has still not materialised, and there is still no date when work might start.

High Barnet’s notoriety as a hot spot for parking fines is to be featured yet again on national television.   Footage for a new series of Dom on the Spot was filmed in the High Street highlighting Barnet Council’s refusal to even consider a short period of free parking in order to help local traders.

A final go-ahead for construction work on a £7 million upgrade for the Spires shopping centre continues to depend on signing up an “international fashion brand”.

“The boys dun good” was the general consensus of passers-by as three High Barnet seniors spent 16 man hours giving the Church Passage bench a much-needed wash and brush-up.

Barnet is living up to its fame in Cockney rhyming slang: a survey shows there are more hairdressing salons in the London borough Barnet than in any other part of capital, except for the West End.